Description:
The development of a three-dimensional spatially evolving compressible mixing layer is investigated numerically using a parallel implementation of Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) on a Cray C-90. The parallel implementation allowed the flow to be highly resolved while significantly reducing the wall-clock runtime. A sustained computation rate of 5.3 Gigaflops including I/O was obtained for a typical production run on a 16 processor machine. A novel mixing layer configuration is investigated where a pressure mismatch is maintained between the two inlet streams. In addition, the sonic character of the two streams is sufficiently different so that the pressure relief wave is trapped in the high speed stream. The trapped wave forces the mixing layer to form a characteristic cellular pattern. The cellular structure introduces curvature into the mixing layer that excites centrifugal instabilities characterized by large-scale counter-rotating vortical pairs embedded within the mixing layer. These are the dominant feature of the flow. Visualizations of these structures in cross-section show the pumping action which lifts dense fluid up into light gas. This effect has a strong impact on mixing enhancement as monitored by a conserved scalar formulation. Once the large-scale structures axe well established in the flow and undergo intensification from favorable velocity gradients, the time-averaged integrated product shows almost a four-fold increase. A spectral analysis of the flow-field over the cellular structures, as part of a full space-time analysis, shows these structures to be zero-frequency modes that develop from low level essentially broad-banded noise. This characterization of the vortical structures and their appearance is consistent with a recent linear stability analysis, of a mixing layer over a curved wall that predicts the most unstable modes to be zero frequency streamwise vortices.

Description:
A new methodology for the modeling of unsteady, nonpremixed, axisymmetric reacting flow in industrial furnaces is presented. The method is an extension of previous work by the authors to complex geometries, multistep kinetics mechanisms, and realistic properties, especially thermochemical data. The walls of the furnace are represented as an embedded boundary in a uniform, rectangular grid. The grid then consists of uniform rectangular cells except at the furnace wall where irregular (mixed) cells may be present. We use finite volume differencing techniques for the convective, viscous, and radiative heat transport terms in the mixed cells, while a finite element-based technique is used to solve the elliptic equation arising from the low-Mach number formulation. Results from the simulation of an experimental natural gas-fired furnace are shown.

Description:
In this paper the authors present an adaptive projection method for modeling unsteady, low-Mach reacting flow in an unconfined region. The equations they solve are based on a model for low-Mach number combustion that consists of the evolution equations for density, species concentrations, enthalpy, and momentum coupled with a constraint on the divergence of the flow. The algorithm is based on a projection methodology in which they first advance the evolution equations and then solve an elliptic equation to enforce the divergence constraint. The adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) scheme uses a time-varying, hierarchical grid structure composed of uniform rectangular grids of varying resolution. The integration scheme on the grid hierarchy is a recursive procedure in which a coarse grid is advanced, fine grids are advanced multiple steps to reach the same time as the coarse grid, and the coarse and the fine grids are synchronized. The method is valid for multiple grids on each level and multiple levels of refinement. The method is currently implemented for laminar, axisymmetric flames with a reduced kinetics mechanism and a Lewis number of unity. Two methane-air flames, one steady and the other flickering, are presented as numerical examples.

Description:
We present a numerical method for solving the multifluid equations of gas dynamics using an operator-split second-order Godunov method for flow in complex geometries in two and three dimensions. The multifluid system treats the fluid components as thermodynamically distinct entities and correctly models fluids with different compressibilities. This treatment allows a general equation-of-state (EOS) specification and the method is implemented so that the EOS references are minimized. The current method is complementary to volume-of-fluid (VOF) methods in the sense that a VOF representation is used, but no interface reconstruction is performed. The Godunov integrator captures the interface during the solution process. The basic multifluid integrator is coupled to a Cartesian grid algorithm that also uses a VOF representation of the fluid-body interface. This representation of the fluid-body interface allows the algorithm to easily accommodate arbitrarily complex geometries. The resulting single grid multifluid-Cartesian grid integration scheme is coupled to a local adaptive mesh refinement algorithm that dynamically refines selected regions of the computational grid to achieve a desired level of accuracy. The overall method is fully conservative with respect to the total mixture. The method will be used for a simple nozzle problem in two-dimensional axisymmetric coordinates.